Rep. DeSantis’ Amendment to Spending Bill Would Reign in Special Counsel’s Russia Probe

Rep. DeSantis’ Amendment to Spending Bill Would Reign in Special Counsel’s Russia Probe

31 Aug, 2017
31 Aug, 2017

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) hopes to put an end to the FBI probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S presidential election and the possible ties between the Trump campaign staff and Moscow through an amendment he hopes to add to the spending bill Congress will craft in September to keep the federal government operating.

“Congress should use the upcoming appropriations bills to establish clear limits to the scope and duration of the special counsel investigation,” DeSantis wrote in op-ed published by Fox on Thursday.

The one-page amendment would stop funding the investigation 180 days after it becomes law and would restrict the investigation of any event that took place before June, 2015 — the date President Donald Trump announced he was throwing his hat into the ring.

In May, after Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the investigation into the Russia debacle, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tapped former FBI director Robert Mueller to head up the investigation.

“I determined that it is on the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in announcing his decision. “My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted.”

In his commentary, DeSantis took aim at the Rosenstein’s decision and Mueller’s wide-ranging probe.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended against criticism of his handling of the amorphous ‘Russia investigation’ by saying that the Department of Justice ‘doesn’t engage in fishing expeditions,’” DeSantis wrote. “Yet, his clumsy management of this matter is the reason why many Americans are concerned that the investigation lacks focus and will veer into unrelated matters, thereby extending the probe far into the future and hampering the ability of the Trump administration to attend to the people’s business.

Rosenstein’s order appointing Robert Mueller to serve as special counsel failed to enumerate a crime to be investigated; instead, the order cited then-FBI Director James Comey’s March testimony identifying the existence of a counterintelligence investigation focusing on Russia, not a criminal investigation targeting members of the Trump administration,” DeSantis wrote. “The order was defective because DOJ regulations make the existence of a criminal investigation a condition precedent to the appointment of a special counsel.

Moreover, the order was so vague that it places little in the way of substantive limits on the scope or duration of the investigation,” De Santis wrote. “The Rosenstein order is effectively an invitation to conduct a fishing expedition.

DeSantis said the media is really the only party interested in promoting the idea that Trump and his campaign “colluded” with the Russians and that the investigation should have an end date.

The notion that the Trump campaign illegally ‘colluded’ with Russian government agents has always seemed to be more a matter of wishful thinking by the media than something based on hard evidence,” DeSantis wrote. “Imposing a deadline will force the special counsel to put up or shut up: if evidence of criminal activity has not surfaced after what will be nearly two years of investigation (including the pre-special counsel investigation conducted by the FBI), then this investigatory cloud hovering over the Trump administration should be removed.

DeSantis had harsh words for what he called Washington’s “ruling class,” which he said would like to see Trump’s presidency undone. He also criticized the team Mueller has assembled.

“For his part, President Trump is reviled by the Washington ruling class and the appointment of a special counsel is a way for the ‘Swamp’ to seek his presidency’s destruction — through investigative paralysis at least, with no evidence of wrongdoing uncovered.  The inexplicable decision of Special Counsel Mueller to stock his office with Democratic partisans has underscored concerns along these lines,” DeSantis wrote.

DeSantis concluded that when Congress is deciding on what gets funding in next month’s spending bill, it should not “fund fishing expeditions.”

DeSantis is vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

via Breitbart News

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Minnesota GOP Candidates Won’t Pledge Support for House Speaker Paul Ryan

Minnesota GOP Candidates Won’t Pledge Support for House Speaker Paul Ryan

31 Aug, 2017
31 Aug, 2017

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) leadership could be in jeopardy, but not from his colleagues in the 115th Congress.

The challenge could come from Republicans elected in the 2018 mid-term election, in this case House candidates from Minnesota.

This news came from a state fair in Minnesota where a journalist asked five Republicans a simple question: “Do you plan to vote against Paul D. Ryan continuing his speakership?”

“Republicans seeking to flip House seats next year declined to support the speaker of the House, offering instead criticisms of Paul D. Ryan’s leadership,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

“I think he’s going in the wrong direction,” said state Rep. Tim Miller. “We’ve got to have leadership that ensures we do the will of the people.’

“I would prefer someone else,” said commercial pilot Dave Hughes.

“We’ll see who runs for speaker,” businessman and candidate Jim Hagedorn said. “Until then, you have to be very cautious about what you do. A lot can happen in a year and a half,”

“When I’m in Congress, I’ll let you know, because people can change their views, change their ways,” said St. Louis County Commissioner Pete Stauber, who later said he would back Ryan if he runs again.

Asked about the video of the fairground discussion, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Jesse Hunt said that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s unpopularity helped Republicans win 2017’s four competitive special elections.

A Ryan-allied super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, also plowed millions of dollars into three of those races, according to the Post.

Hunt defended Ryan when asked about his future speakership.

“Speaker Ryan has been instrumental in the passage of key House legislative items and the successful election of four new Republican members in 2017,” Hunt said. “We’re thankful for his leadership.”

A Huffington Post poll, though, shows Ryan’s unfavorable rating at 49.3 percent, with only 29.9 percent having a favorable opinion of the Speaker —- in keeping with a downward trend since President Donald Trump was elected.

Rep. Tim Walz’s (D-Minn.) decision to run for governor in 2018 opened up his House seat, which Hagedorn is hoping to fill.

“The other candidates on the stage in Minnesota are fighting to face Democratic incumbents in the 7th and 8th districts, which Trump won by 30.8 and 15.6 points,” the Post reported.

VIDEO

via Breitbart News

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Sheriff David Clarke Would Be a Perfect ANTIFA Czar

The one nationally known lawman that liberals hate even more than former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is Milwaukee County’s David A. Clarke.

While Arpaio is loathed for his no-nonsense approach to the illegal alien problem, Clarke is even more reviled by the left for being a black conservative.

Sheriff Clarke unexpectedly resigned on Thursday and while the news was celebrated by the left, the joyous outpourings were somewhat tempered by reports that Clarke may soon take a position with the Trump administration.

Via The Hill “Sheriff David Clarke expected to join Trump administration: report”:

Former Milwaukee County, Wis., Sheriff David Clarke is expected to join President Trump’s administration, according to a new report.

Two sources familiar with the situation told Politico, which first reported the story, that Clarke is expected to join the Trump administration in a position that is not Senate-confirmed. The former sheriff told Politico that he would “talk about my future plans next week.”

Clarke resigned from his position as sheriff on Thursday. In his resignation letter, Clarke did not provide a reason for his resignation.

If Clarke indeed moves from state to federal law enforcement, there would be few men better suited to head up efforts to eradicate ANTIFA.

With the petition to declare the masked fascists as a terrorist group continuing to gather signatures, Sheriff Clarke would make a perfect ANTIFA czar.

He would strike fear into the hearts of the extreme left.

via Downtrend.com

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A Banana Peel Traumatized University Of Mississippi Students

Insane. Via Daily Caller: With little else to worry about, University of Mississippi students attending a Greek Life retreat this past weekend were traumatized by the sight of a banana peel on a tree. The Daily Mississippian reported on Wednesday that after students went bananas after word of the peel spread around campus, prompting the […]

via Weasel Zippers

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Swedish Man Charged for Eating Bacon in Front of Muslim Women

A 53-year-old Stockholm man was convicted by authorities for – literally – eating bacon in front of a few veiled Muslim women.

The Islamic women reported him to the police for eating bacon in front of them. The man allegedly sat near the veiled Muslim women and began eating his bacon and being obnoxious with it in a taunting way toward the women.

Obnoxious? Sure. Criminal? Ridiculous.

The report states that the Muslim women were uncomfortable with the situation and attempted to move somewhere else, that dastardly bacon-eating fiend followed the women with his pork product. The man also apparently said some not-so-nice things about the women’s religion.

Rude? Sure. Criminal? Absurd.

Various English-speaking social media users commented on how absurd the charge was:

The post Swedish Man Charged for Eating Bacon in Front of Muslim Women appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

via The Gateway Pundit

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ISIS has uranium, and it’s scary who they want to give it to

Al Qaeda and ISIS have access to uranium that they intend to give to Iran, according to a high-ranking Somali official.

A letter from August 11 from Minister of Foreign Affairs Yusuf Garaad Omar sent to U.S Ambassador to Somalia Stephen Schwartz revealed that the al Shabaab terror network, an Al Qaeda affiliate, has connected with a regional faction of ISIS and is capturing territory in Somalia that includes uranium mines.

“Only the United States has the capacity to identify and smash Al-Shabaab elements operating within our country. The time for surgical strikes and limited engagement has passed, as Somalia’s problems have metastasized into the World’s problems,” the letter said. “Every day that passes without intervention provides America’s enemies with additional material for nuclear weapons. There can be no doubt that global stability is at stake.”

Let’s review. Iran has long had nuclear ambitions, which they were supposed to back off from under the agreement made by the Obama administration.

President Donald Trump has been vocally opposed to the continuation of the Iran nuclear deal, but his administration has twice recertified it, despite strong objections from Trump himself, most recently in July. For the record, the United Nations has said Iran is complying with the deal, so far.

However, if there is any truth to the assertion that Iran will accept uranium from ISIS and Al Qaeda, the United States could be facing a massive national security threat, adding on to issues with North Korea, Russia, and conflicts ongoing in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

The U.S. State Department had no comment on the letter Thursday, but did not dispute that it was authentic, according to Fox News.

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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Virgil – Trump Is Right: America Needs Pro-Growth Tax Reform, as Well as Fairness 

The Route 66 Dream

Kicking off his tax-reform campaign on Wednesday with a forceful speech in Springfield, Missouri, President Trump got right to the point. Tax reform, including tax reductions, should focus on Main Street, not Wall Street: 

We’re here today to launch our plans to bring back Main Street by reducing the crushing tax burden on our companies and on our workers. Our self-destructive tax code costs Americans millions and millions of jobs, trillions of dollars, and billions of hours spent on compliance and paperwork.

As Trump noted, Springfield is the birthplace of the famed Route 66, a vital piece of infrastructure that was once the key roadway between the Midwest to the West. In his Trump Nation-friendly manner, Trump recalled, 

For many decades, Route 66 captured the American spirit. The communities along this historic route were a vivid symbol of America’s booming industry. Truck drivers hauled made-in-America goods along this vital artery of commerce. Families passed through bustling towns on their way to explore the great American West. And high-quality manufacturing jobs lifted up communities, gave Americans a paycheck that could support a family.

Thus Trump laid out the stakes for his economic agenda. As he has been saying all along, his presidency should be judged as a success if it revives the American Dream for the cities, towns, and places along 66 and all the other Heartland arteries.   

Yet of late, robust economic growth has been conspicuously lacking. As the President observed, “In the last 10 years, our economy has grown at only around two percent a year.” Such anemic growth has barely kept up with population growth, and so it’s no surprise that median real earnings are up just a tiny fraction over the last decade. 

The basic economic logic is inescapable: Wages are a function of the demand for labor relative to supply. And so if economic growth is soft, then wage growth will be soft. 

Meanwhile, Trump continued, other countries, notably China and India, have been enjoying GDP growth of seven percent or more. In other words, other nations—including nations that aren’t necessarily friendly—are gaining on us, big-time. Indeed if present trends continue, China’s economy is expected to overtake ours soon.  

So we can quickly see: If China builds itself a bigger economy, it will also have more power, and that will, in turn, create still more power. Already, the Chinese are shrewdly using their newfound wealth—much of it gained through unfair trade deals with the U.S., which is a topic for another time—to launch a vast new infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, aimed at profitably connecting China to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe by land, much as Route 66 and the railroads once profitably connected the regions of the U.S. 

In other words, the U.S. can’t afford to be complacent. Instead, this is a time to get the country moving again, to borrow the famous phrase of a famously pro-growth tax-cutting president, John F. Kennedy. As ably chronicled by economic maven Larry Kudlow in his recent book, JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity, it was Kennedy’s tax plan in the 1960s that set the stage for Ronald Reagan’s similarly successful tax plan in the 1980s.  

So Trump was right when he said in Missouri, “If we want to renew our prosperity, and to restore opportunity, then we must reduce the tax burden on our companies and on our workers.” The 45th president added, “If we achieve sustained three percent growth, that means 12 million new jobs and $10 trillion dollars of new economic activity over the next decade.” And yet, he also declared, if we can put the right policies in place, we can do much better than three percent growth. 

Okay, so what policies do we, in fact, need? What must be done to unlock the true potential of the American people?  

The Power of the Bully Pulpit

In his speech, Trump chose to focus on broad outlines and “must-have” principles, as opposed to micro-details. That was a wise approach, because, after all, it’s Congress that will have the final say on the legislation; all a president can do is sign the bill, or not.  

In the meantime, of course, the commander-in-chief has his bully pulpit, and yet that’s best used for national leadership and exhortation; the nitty-gritty details will inevitably be hammered out in the smokeless smoke-filled conference rooms of Capitol Hill. (On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed his confidence that the President would be able to sign a bill this year.) 

True Reform

So Trump was better off outlining only his big-picture principles, which he defined as “a tax code that is simple, fair, and easy to understand … getting rid of the loopholes and complexity that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans and special interests.”

Here we might pause to note that Trump said that we must do more than just stimulate the economy, as important as that goal is.  So what do we mean by “more”? What else might be in the back of Trump’s mind?   

He means this: To be sustainable, a pro-growth strategy must not be reckless; that is, we can’t build enduring prosperity on the basis of speculative bubbles, of the sort that we saw in the years leading up to the crashes of 1929 or 2008.  

In addition, we can’t have an economic plan that stimulates the economic well-being of only the few. So most obviously, we don’t want a repeat of the hideously upward-income-transferring Wall Street bailouts of the Bush 43 and Obama years. 

Moreover, we also want to build basic equity into our hoped-for revised pro-growth tax system, such that equal incomes are taxed equally—no more gaping loopholes that shock the conscience of the country.  

Indeed, history tells us that if we can’t write those sorts of fair reforms into the code, then the legitimacy of the whole tax system will remain in question. And any perceived illegitimacy is an open invitation to the likes of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to sweep in with their whole left-wing redistributionist agenda.   

So as always, the prudent conservative envisions a plan that will stand the test of time, providing predictability to long-term investors, but not sneaky windfalls to greedheads and other get-rich-quickers.  

As the great conservative statesman Edmund Burke liked to say, we must look at all things in reference and proportion. So with that Burkean wisdom in mind, let’s examine two specific examples of rightful reform, applying to personal and to corporate taxation.   

Personal Tax Reform 

First, as to personal taxation, one of the biggest—and probably most egregious—loopholes is the so-called “carried interest” provision, which allows investment managers and hedge-funders to pay a lower tax rate than tens of millions of Americans who earn only a smidgen of those lofty Wall Street-related incomes. In a nutshell, the carried-interest loophole privileges the income of investment moguls, allowing them to pretend that their income is a capital gain, and thus taxable at only half the rate.  

One well-known beneficiary of this loophole is Mitt Romney, who managed to pile up a fortune measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars while paying a tax rate of 13 or 14 percent. (From those numbers, it would seem that Romney was benefiting from more than just the carried-interest loophole, but tax-reformers have to start somewhere.)  

So where, exactly, is the Trump administration on this topic? During the 2016 campaign, Candidate Trump was clear: carried-interest loopholers were “getting away with murder.” He added,

The hedge fund guys didn’t build this country. These are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky … a lot of them—they are paper-pushers. They make a fortune. They pay no tax. It’s ridiculous.

However, since then, the Trump Administration has had less to say about this provision. Back in April, former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said that “carried interest is on the table”—that is, on the chopping block. And of course, Priebus is no longer there. 

On Wednesday, while Trump didn’t mention carried interest, he did blast “special interests” and “special interest loopholes” five times—and so we’ll just have to see what emerges from the Congressional “sausage factory.”   

Yet in the meantime, we can say this: Tax reform that does not include the elimination of this pro-plutocrat loophole is something less than true tax reform.  

To be sure, one should never let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and so progress in the right direction is still progress—and yet still, any tax-reform plan that fails to significantly nick Romney and his corporate-liquidator buddies at Bain Capital will fall short of mission: accomplished. 

Corporate Tax Reform

Second, as for corporate taxes, Trump was right to shine the spotlight on our destructively high corporate tax rate. As he said, 

In 1986, Ronald Reagan led the world by cutting our corporate tax rate to 34 percent. That was below the average rate for developed countries at the time. Everybody thought that was a monumental thing that happened. But then, under this pro-America system, our economy boomed. It just went beautifully–right through the roof. The middle class thrived and median family income increased.

Okay, so that was then; as we have seen, Reagan, like JFK before him, was a great pro-growth tax-rate-cutter.  

Yet since 1986, Trump continued, the U.S. has stagnated, while other countries have been gaining on us; it is, after all, a dynamic world environment, in which countries scramble to gain comparative advantage: 

Other countries saw the success. They looked at us … and they acted very swiftly by cutting their taxes lower, and lower, and lower, and reforming their tax systems to be far more competitive than ours.

Indeed, as our corporate rate has stayed still, rival nations have leapfrogged us: 

Over the past 30 years, the average business tax rate among developed nations fell from 45 percent to less than 24 percent. And some countries have an unbelievably low tax, including, by the way, China and some others that are highly competitive, and really doing very well against us. They are taking us, frankly, to the cleaners.

Today, while the average corporate tax rate of our rivals is, as Trump says, less than 24 percent, the U.S. rate is the highest in the developed world, at 35 percent. This chart from the Tax Foundation nicely visualizes the discrepancy between the US and other countries, although since it was created in 2014, the gap has grown even wider, as other countries, including Japan and the United Kingdom, have further cut their corporate rate.   

So it’s good news that Trump has proposed cutting the U.S. corporate rate to 15 percent, which would offer the promise of America once again being the best place in the world in which to do business.  

And why is the corporate rate so important? Because the rate determines the value of corporate investment, which is judged by the after-tax return. In other words, the higher the tax rate, the lower the after-tax return—and thus the less worthwhile the investment.  

As good economists say: If you want less of something, raise the tax on that something. That’s a point that should be obvious enough to anyone who is not a doctrinaire leftist, and yet since the Reagan era, D.C. politicians have dithered on this key economic variable, neglecting the reality of international competition—and as a result, America is worse off. 

Of course, some will immediately point out that many corporations don’t pay tax at that 35 percent rate, or anything close. For instance, Amazon, controlled by Jeff Bezos—who also owns, and subsidizes, the perpetually Trump-bashing Washington Post—earned more than $3.5 billion from 2005 to 2009, and yet the company paid, according to calculations from Capital IQ, a tax rate of just 4.3 percent. How does Amazon manage that? One trick is that the Seattle-based company pretends that it is operating mostly in the European country of Luxembourg, where the effective corporate tax rate is a mere six percent. And from there, Amazon’s lawyers and accountants have managed to whittle its tax bill down even further.  

Yet even as Bezos and other companies are making out like bandits, other companies are, in fact, paying the full corporate rate, or close to it. Typically, these are firms that operate—and hire—mostly in the U.S. Moreover, when state and local taxes are added in, American operators are in fact paying a hefty bill.  

One such domestic company, according to a 2016 report from The New York Times and S&P Global Market Intelligence, is Wal-Mart—the Arkansas retailer pays a 31.2 percent rate. 

Right away we can spot the unfairness: Amazon and Wal-Mart are both retailers—arch-rivals, in fact—and yet Amazon pays four percent, while Wal-Mart pays 31 percent—nearly eight times more.  

To put those numbers another way, an investor in Amazon can expect to see 96 cents on each dollar of profit, while an investor in Wal-Mart can expect to see only 69 cents. Again, after-tax return on investment is a key metric for any company. 

So it’s no wonder Amazon is now worth $474 billion, while Wal-Mart is worth about half of that. In the meantime, the rest of us can ask: Do we really want the tax code to reward certain companies, while punishing others? Do we think that such picking of winners and losers is good for the economy—and all of us? Especially when the winners operate mostly overseas, and the losers operate mostly at home?  

Indeed, we can note a further wicked quirk in the current corporate-tax system: That 35 percent rate applies to all U.S. companies—even tax-dodgers such as Amazon—if they invest here.  

In other words, the way to beat the high U.S. rate is not to invest in America at all, but rather, to make money overseas, and to keep it there. So that’s why Amazon labels itself as doing so much business in Luxembourg, a tiny country of less than 600,000 people.  

However, that clever play by Amazon means more bad news for America. As Trump also said in Missouri, somewhere between $3 trillion and $5 trillion in American corporate profits are permanently parked overseas. Its U.S. owners simply have no intention of bringing that money home to face the 35 percent rate.  

Yes, it’s slightly less convenient to have the cash stashed in offshore tax-shelters, and yet with the current high American rate, the net savings to the owners are anything but slight—so the money stays where it is. 

So Trump made another good point on Wednesday when he said that a lower corporate tax rate would help bring that money home: “We can return trillions and trillions of dollars to our economy and spur billions of dollars in new investments in our struggling communities and throughout our nation.”

Thus we can see: Genuine reform of the corporate tax code would create a new, lower, rate for all. And yet real reform would have the effect of raising the effective rate paid by Amazon and other globalist companies, even as it reduced the effective rate paid by more domestic companies such as Wal-Mart. And at the same time, reform would encourage trillions of dollars to come home, thereby boosting our economy.  

Needless to say, more than these reforms are needed to fully to revive the well-being of workers; we must address other issues, too, including trade and infrastructure.

Still, Trump has it right: Tax reform is the best place to start. And yet since true tax reform will rouse the swamp creatures to defend their swamp, Trump has no choice other than to rally the country to his side, just as Kennedy and Reagan did in decades past. As he said in Missouri,

Today, I am asking every citizen to join me in dreaming big and bold and daring things–beautiful things–for our country. I am asking every member of Congress, of which we have many with us today, to join me in unleashing America’s full potential. I am asking everyone in this room and across the nation to join me in demanding nothing but the best for our nation and for our people.

That’s a compelling message, for sure. And yet if Trump wishes to rally the power needed to steamroll the swamp things, he will have to spend less time inside the Beltway— and more time among the voters who live along Route 66, and all the 66s of this great big country.   

The American people put Trump into office, and it will be those same people who push through his agenda.

via Breitbart News

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Gorka: Trump Has Best Instincts, but Obama Holdovers Are ‘Massive Problem’

Former Deputy Adviser to the president Dr. Sebastian Gorka looked at the battle between the Trump White House and the media, holdovers from the Obama administration, and the entrenched bureaucracy on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily.

SiriusXM host Alex Marlow elicited a groan from Gorka by running through some examples of the “Fake News-industrial complex” and mentioning Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, who seems to enjoy much more contact with President Trump than friendlier media outlets.

“Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush, people who have actually called themselves ‘hacks’ in internal emails to Podesta. That’s all you need to know,” Gorka said, referring to emails exposed by WikiLeaks. Marlow said this reinforced his point that too many people inside the White House seem invested in a losing battle to win the approval of hostile media.

“Can we go beyond media, and go to really the massive big picture?” Gorka asked. “Because people have to understand what happened in the last eight months. Our listeners understand this, but I’m reiterating it to reassure everybody that we are in this for the long game. We’re talking about eight years, not eight months — this is about the long game. This is bureaucratic warfare. This is indirect warfare. This is political warfare.”

“The fact is, on November the 8th, what happened? It’s like, it’s literally Red Dawn. It’s a scrappy bunch of insurgents, the wolverines won against the establishment,” he said. “The GOP thought that President Trump was their candidate. No, only formally, only on paper. He had nothing to do with the Swamp. He won because he was the antithesis of the Swamp. So a small band of scrappy men and women won the election as an insurgency.”

“Then what happens a few months later on January the 20th? It’s a hostile takeover. The federal government is millions of employees. You add the armed forces, literally, it is millions of employees. In come a few people who believe in the agenda, who fought for the agenda, who put their careers on the line for the agenda. And then what happens? We have to take over government. And then suddenly we see the sea pitch of individuals into the building,” he said.

“Tucker Carlson nailed it. I don’t think Tucker Carlson is a huge fan of Breitbart or Steve Bannon, but when he did his segment after Steve left, he said, ‘Whatever you think about Steve Bannon, he would not have been at home in a Hillary Clinton White House.’ The fact is, we had people fill the building who not only would have been at home in a Hillary Clinton White House, who actually, some of them — you know who I’m talking about — would have had Cabinet positions in a Hillary Clinton White House,” Gorka told Marlow.

Gorka said excessive concern about Clinton-friendly staff in the Trump administration was unwarranted, however.

“I have never met anybody who has the accuracy of instinct that Donald J. Trump has. He has a preternatural — he’s a supernatural instinct to act. You take him a pallet of decisions, he may not have read the Peloponnesian Wars or the latest article by a peer-reviewed journal, but he’ll look at those options, he’ll choose one of them, and you know what? 98 percent of the time, it’s the right option. He’s just an instinctual actor,” said Gorka.

“I know right now that that instinct is going to serve him very well in the coming months, and he’s going to realize who around him are not serving him with the best advice,” he anticipated.

“I’m not saying Steve or myself are going back in the building, but I assure you, the people you are most worried about, the MAGA crowd are most worried about, will be leaving the White House sooner or later, and other individuals associated with the original platform will be coming back,” he added.

“Look at Dave Bossie. Look at Corey Lewandowski. They were around the West Wing all the time. Did they work for the U.S. government? No. Were they there to drink cappuccinos in the Eisenhower cafeteria? No. They were in the Oval Office. So the president reaches out and he’s loyal,” Gorka declared.

A caller asked Gorka for an up-to-date definition of the “right wing,” which has become heavily factionalized.

“I don’t think there’s a neat, discretely-defined entity out there that it is,” he replied. “It’s the people. It’s the blue-collar workers of the Steel Valley who voted for a billionaire from New York. That’s who it is. It’s the people who are not ashamed of America, but the people who believe in America. It’s the people who think, ‘Why should jobs go to China? Is that what globalization means for me and my family?’”

“I hate it, I absolutely detest it, when people force us into using lazy labels — neoliberals, neocon, the Manhattan set, the whatever. No, it’s Americans who believe in America,” he contended. “If you’re part of that description, that’s who we’re talking about.”

Gorka said a great deal has happened in the few days since he left the White House, prompting him to keep a heavy schedule of media appearances as a commentator.

“The media environment is going to change in the very near future,” he predicted. “I know Steve is plotting, I know Steve is talking to a lot of people. The PAC world is abuzz, so you will see some interesting things happen in the PACs.”

“We had eight months of kind of somnambulance, a kind of lurching to the snooze button in the PAC world. It was very disconcerting on the inside to see a lot of talk and not a lot happening to support the agenda from the outside,” he elaborated. “I think that’s going to change very rapidly. One of the key catalysts of that is tax reform. A lot of people are worried.”

Marlow commended President Trump for doing a good job of presenting tax reform to the public on Wednesday.

“The president did absolutely what had to be done,” Gorka agreed. “But if you look at what the Hill’s done, I wouldn’t label it as the Manhattan set or the Goldman Sachs set — it’s unworkable is what it is. It’s like the solution to Obamacare: it’s not a solution. It’s as bad as what we already have. It’s just unworkable, it’s overcomplicated. Talk to Stephen Moore, talk to Larry Kudlow. In fact, if you look at the deductions, if you look at the way it’s currently worded with regards to real estate factoring into your tax deductions, it’s a disaster for small businesses.”

“We need to continue unleashing the economy, and part of that isn’t the massive corporations. The key to that are the small to medium-sized businesses,” he urged, anticipating movement toward “reforming the tax reform package to be sensible and to serve those it should serve the most, which is small to medium-sized businesses and individual U.S. taxpayers.”

A caller from Canada expressed dismay at how many believers in the MAGA agenda hired by President Trump have been fired by subordinates like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and said he fears the “Deep State” remains powerful enough to block the president.

“I don’t like the phrase ‘Deep State’ because I don’t like conspiracy theories,” Gorka said in response. “I have a whole bookshelf of them at home, but I use them as entertainment. I prefer the phrase ‘Permanent State.’”

“I’ll give you an example of my experience, two things I learned in the last eight months,” he offered. “I thought I was adequately cynical about the media in America. I had no idea. The fact that the mainstream media would not only lie about me and my colleagues, but would come after my dead mother, my wife, and my teenage son was when the scales fell off my eyes. There is no moral compass. There are people, many thousands of people in this country who call themselves journalists, who have no moral compass. That’s Number One.”

“Secondly, with regard to the obstacles inside the administration, I wasn’t a member of the NSC. I worked for Steve. But I was invited to key meetings of the NSC, especially on Iraq, Syria, the Qatar crisis, etc. To sit in a Situation Room with all the out stations from the government – DIA, CIA, State, the Pentagon, embassies, and et cetera — on a key issue of import to the president for 90 minutes and repeatedly not hear anyone mention who the president is, and what he wants, and what he said yesterday in Warsaw, or Riyadh, or Houston, or wherever, was shocking to me,” he recalled.

Gorka said it fell to him as a political appointee to speak up in those meetings and ask, “Hey, guys, do you remember why we have this meeting, and what the president said about Qatar yesterday?”

“That told me that we have thousands of people who pick up a government paycheck funded by you, funded by me, who think they know better than the person who was chosen to lead the country. That’s the Permanent State for me, and that’s what we’ve got to fight back,” he said.

Gorka and Marlow shared a laugh at Politico suggesting “Obama holdovers” in the Trump administration should be christened “patriots” instead.

“Yes, if your definition of ‘patriot’ means somebody who doesn’t want to obey the Commander-in-Chief and leaks daily to the press,” Gorka said sarcastically. “That’s Newspeak. That’s George Orwell.”

Gorka said Obama holdovers remain a “massive problem, a huge problem.”

“There was an Obama holdover who, to a senior director of the NSC in the first three months — before even H.R. came on — called me and another individual ‘the ideologues that are the problem inside the building’ to his boss,” he said. “Think about that for a second. A civil servant from another agency who feels confident enough to tell his politically appointed superior about somebody who’s a deputy assistant, and feels he will have no consequences to that action. It’s really shocking.”

“To the point you’ve raised: there is a concerted effort, and that’s why it’s so great to be on the outside, to push back,” he told Marlow. “Just follow Ben Rhodes’ Twitter feed. Follow Colin Kahl. These are the guys who tweet in the morning, that meme, that theme will be spun out in 20 articles in the next 12 hours on Politico, on Buzzfeed, on HuffPo. They are here to — as former Obama officials from the outside — to undermine this administration with their buddies still in the building.”

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.

via Breitbart News

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Physical Assault on Journalists’ Rap Sheet Reveal Antifa: 10 – Trump Supporters: 0

Physical Assault on Journalists’ Rap Sheet Reveal Antifa: 10 – Trump Supporters: 0

31 Aug, 2017
31 Aug, 2017

Daily Caller deputy editor Scott Greer made the excellent point that contrary to our national media’s ongoing narrative about the “dangers” of President Trump criticizing all of their fake news, it is not Trump supporters who are beating up journalists. Thus far, despite all the phony hand-wringing from media elites over how Trump is “inciting” his followers, not a single one has laid a hand on a member of the media.

There is, however, one group guilty of regularly assaulting members of the media, and that group just so happens to be the very same leftwing gang of masked thugs that the media frequently compares to the American troops who stormed Normandy on D-Day, to freedom fighters, to righteous opponents of hate and bigotry

While a quick Internet search came up with too-many-to-count instances of Antifa committing various acts of personal and property violence, I was able to find no fewer than 10 instances of Antifa assaulting members of the very same media so enamored with Antifa, so eager to defend these leftwing terrorists who stalk, disrupt, and assault everyday Republicans, who (like the media) see no moral difference between a Trump supporter and a neo-Nazi.

  1. Independent journalist Keith Campbell
  2. CBS photojournalist
  3. Hill reporter Taylor Lorenz
  4. Journalist shoved by Antifa after they steal his phone.
  5. Andrew Bolt, a 57 year-old commentator for Sky News.
  6. Max Bachmann of Heavy.com.
  7. Jack Posobiec of Rebel Media.
  8. Marcus DiPaola of Heavy.com.
  9. Global News crew in Quebec.
  10. Daily Caller cameraman.

Now, don’t be fooled by pleas of ignorance. Our media is very well aware of what is going on here, well aware of the fact that these leftwing hooligans regularly target their colleagues in this manner. Why, then, doesn’t the media — who love to report on themselves as brave victims — go to Defcon 1 against Antifa?

The answer is very simple…

Despite the physical assaults, the bullying, the equipment damage, the menacing, the cuts and bruises, our media still sees Antifa as an ally, as their own righteous army of vigilantes roaming the earth,  just like Hitler’s Brownshirts, to beat up anyone who does not hold the “correct” political views.

Just like the Democrat Party, the national media loves that this mob is out there, wants them out there, cheers, excuses and rationalizes their violence, their riots, their suppression of “unapproved” speech.

Yes, Virginia, the media hates us enough that they do not at all mind being bloodied themselves if that is what it takes to further The Holy Cause of Social Justice.

 Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC.               Follow his Facebook Page here.

via Breitbart News

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